A Dad and a Writer, Part 3: Weeks 5 through 8

Okay, not really. In fact, things are getting incrementally better now, with the baby sleeping a few more minutes between feedings at night, and especially since my girlfriend and I are getting better and more efficient at all those baby-raising tasks.

In a way, that’s the difficulty I have to face: the excitement of having a new baby has worn off and now it’s the routine of childcare that’s beginning to be a bit of a drag.

It’s the apparent lack of progress that does it for me – usually, there’s a big jump in cognitive and physical abilities at around six weeks of age, but my son was born four weeks early so in our case we have about two more weeks of feed/sleep/feed/sleep/feed/wash/sleep to go through before the next baby level-up.

Let’s be clear: the problem here is me and my expectations, not the baby. It’s funny, because I have the same problem as a writer: I’m super motivated to get started on a writing milestone (whether it’s starting a new chapter, finishing one, or whatever) but I find it very hard to deal with the middle part, since there’s no clear goal or marker of success. I guess that in both cases, I just need to power through until I reach the next exciting bit.

On a more prosaic level, I’m still struggling to find time to work on the whole becoming-a-full-time-writer project. Whenever I can scrounge up an hour or so, I use it to either look for prospective agents, work on queries, or even to actually write a bit, but that amounts to maybe an hour a day during the week once I factor in work and household tasks (and I do need to let out some steam sometimes.) I’m really looking forward to getting a few more minutes back every day, because I do think they’ll make a major difference.

Speaking of which – I have a few more minutes available right now, so that could be an entire additionnal sentence for Book the Second. Quick, to the manuscript file!